Kate Nahapetian

About Kate Nahapetian

Kate Nahapetian is the Co-Founder of GovItUp.com, a civic-tech platform advancing government transparency and accountability.

An attorney who has litigated multi-million dollar class actions, her more than 20 years of public policy experience includes working for then Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr., the U.S. Department of Justice, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Disability Rights International. As Government Affairs Director for the Armenian National Committee of America – recognized as one of the most effective grassroots ethnic advocacy organizations in the country – she led successful foreign policy lobbying campaigns before Congress and senior White House officials. She also served as Founding Executive Director of the Armenian Legal Center for Justice and Human Rights, where she built joint human rights initiatives with law schools nationwide, including Yale and the University of Southern California.

Kate received a J.D., with a focus on international and human rights law, from the University of California at Berkeley School of Law and a B.A., magna cum laude, from American University. She was awarded a Konrad Adenauer Foundation Fellowship to pursue graduate studies at The University of Bonn in Germany and researched EU asylum policies for the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin. 

Her publications include, “Confronting State Complicity in International Law,” UCLA Journal of International Law and Foreign Affairs, and “Selective Justice: Prosecuting Rape in the International Criminal Tribunals of the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda,” Berkeley Women’s Law Journal.

Kate was born to Armenian parents in Iran.